The Islamists and local Sunnis who overran the Iraqi town of Mosul are believed to have suffered up to 70 deaths from an Iraqi drone attack on a prison converted to a base and Kurdish shelling Wednesday. A Kurdish Peshmerga commander warned that 50,000 members of the Yazidi minority, who fled to the mountains when their town of Sinjar was invaded over the weekend, are in dire peril of death. They are stranded without food or water. The UN has credible reports of 40 Yazidi children dying of “violence, displacement and dehydration” since Sunday. US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce has urged the administration to send drones to back the Kurdish forces to avoid “a humanitarian nightmare of unspeakable proportions.”